No. 20 from the series What We Make of Language

“into the open book of sky”

No. 22 from the series What We Make of Language

“midnight’s torn pages”

No. 18 from the series What We Make of Language

“the grammar of shadows”

Artist’s Statement

What We Make of Language is a paper collage series that includes self-made papers, acrylics, inks, stamps, photographs, embellishments, and collage fodder. The words are culled from my book Warp and Weft: Tanka Threads (Keibooks, 2015).

Debbie Strange

is a chronically ill, short-form poet, visual artist, and photographer whose creative passions connect her more closely to the world, to others, and to herself. She lives in Canada, and thousands of her poems and artworks have been published worldwide. Debbie’s most recent book, The Language of Loss: Haiku & Tanka Conversations, won the Sable Books 2019 International Women’s Haiku Contest and Haiku Canada’s 2022 Marianne Bluger Chapbook Award. It also received an Honourable Mention in the Haiku Society of America’s 2021 Merit Book Awards.

For further information, please visit Debbie’s publication archive at: https://debbiemstrange.blogspot.com/

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Seasonal Snippets, four collages by Debbie Strange in The Wise Owl (31 July 2023)

⚡ Haiku, Tanka, and Haiga by Debbie Strange, World Haiku Series 2022 at Akita International Haiku Network (14 March 2023)

⚡ The Other Side of Light [Seven images from the series], with artist’s commentary, in KYSO Flash (Issue 10, Fall 2018)

⚡ The Tanka of Debbie Strange, an interview by Catherine MacDonald in portage and slain (30 April 2016), in which the poet and artist describes her collection of tanka triptychs, Warp and Weft, and her creative process